The Ontario Reign (31-18-2-1) put 20 shots on goal during the third period but all were stopped by goaltender Matt Villalta, who led the Tucson Roadrunners (26-22-3-2) to a 4-1 victory on Wednesday night at Toyota Arena.
Taylor Ward netted the lone tally for Ontario in a losing effort, an unassisted strike in the first for his 10th goal of the year.
Villalta stopped 36 of 37 total attempts the Reign put on net during the contest to pick up his and the team’s first win of the 2024-25 season over Ontario.
Ward kicked off the scoring with a strike at 11:10 of the opening frame, intercepting a pass and quickly wristing it past Villalta to make it 1-0.
The Roadrunners responded on a similar play to Ward’s goal at 14:33 when Andrew Agozzino converted a turnover in front of the Reign net into a tying tally, evening the score at 1-1.
Tucson took over the game in the second, scoring twice in a three-minute span to earn a lead they never surrendered. Julian Lutz made it 2-1 at 12:25 before Montana Onyebuchi extended the advantage to 3-1 at 15:23 after Joseph Cecconi denied a bid by Hunter Drew, sweeping the puck off the goal line. The puck eventually found Onyebuchi, who beat a stickless Pheonix Copley.
Ontario out-shot Tucson 20-4 during the third, but weren’t able to get anything to show for it on the scoreboard in the final frame.
Kevin Connauton added an unassisted empty-net goal at 18:36 to seal the win for the Roadrunners.
Copley who made his sixth consecutive start for Ontario in goal, denied 17 of Tucson’s 20 shots in the contest.
Neither team converted on the power play in the game, with the Roadrunners going 0-for-2 while the Reign were 0-for-3.
Postgame reactions from Ward and head coach Marco Sturm are below –
Taylor Ward
On losing for the 3rd consecutive game
Feels like we’re having a bit of a tough go of it in the last week. But there were good things tonight, but there’s also a lot of things that we need to clean up. Going behind a bunch of games in a row now is obviously not what we want, so that’s probably the first thing we need to dial in on. But like I said, there’s a lot of stuff that we need to focus on right now, and we’re going to get ready for the weekend.
On the energy in the 3rd period
It was better but we need to do that throughout the whole game. I don’t think that if we get down and then we find our legs and find some energy, I think that’s a bad game plan. I think we need to come out with that a lot earlier and more often.
On scoring his goal
It’s good to break the slump, but obviously I don’t think our response was good enough. There were some good things tonight, but still pretty disappointing.
On his game overall in the loss
I felt all right tonight. Wish I could have done more. Matty V made some good saves on me. Wish some of those would have went in, obviously. I thought my line was pretty good tonight, with Studs and Andre. They’re easy to play with and good players, so I thought we were all right.
Marco Sturm
On what the frustration was in the loss
The frustrating part was us. Had a decent start, but then after they scored we didn’t have anything going on, pretty much all game. Unfortunately flat again, on the bench, on the ice, and off the ice. If you’re going to play like that, you’re not going to win too many hockey games.
On switching up the lines in the 3rd period
Those guys, they’ve been effective in the past, so I just tried to get something going. We didn’t have a scoring chance for a long stretch during that game and in the second period. So I thought, give a little bit of a boost and excitement, whatever it is, just try to get anything going. Unfortunately, it didn’t help.
On the play of Samuel Fagemo
He probably wants to score more than anything else, but also you got to work for it. The goals don’t come easy and for us as a team right now. Three games in a row now, we only scored one goal and gave twelve up. So you’ll never win any hockey games. We got to figure out, starting tomorrow, how to get better, and how to get pucks out of the net, and how to score again.
The Reign are back in action on Friday night when they battle the San Diego Gulls at Toyota Arena beginning at 7 p.m.
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